The Time of My Life

349 Pages·2011·1.37 MB·English

by  Ahern Cecelia

Cecelia Ahern
The Time of my Life
Dedication
For my precious girl, Robin
Epigraph
‘You used to be much more … “muchier”.
You’ve lost your muchness.’
The Mad Hatter to Alice in the film of Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
I didn’t read the rest. I didn’t need to, I…
Chapter Two
I’d heard about this kind of thing happening which is…
Chapter Three
I was halfway through the bottle of wine by the…
Chapter Four
On the fateful Saturday that I’d been dreading ever since…
Chapter Five
Sunday. It had loomed over me all weekend like that…
Chapter Six
Silchesters don’t cry. It was what my father had told…
Chapter Seven
‘We were up at four thirty this morning,’ he panted,…
Chapter Eight
A week later I awoke at seven a.m. in a…
Chapter Nine
‘He did the Inca Trail last week, did you see…
Chapter Ten
I took a forkful of my three-bean salad, in which…
Chapter Eleven
We had arranged to meet the following day in Starbucks…
Chapter Twelve
He wanted to begin our journey together by seeing where…
Chapter Thirteen
I was standing on the fire escape, secret smoking location…
Chapter Fourteen
I regretted arranging with Melanie to meet the following night.
Chapter Fifteen
‘So tell me about your dad,’ Life asked the following…
Chapter Sixteen
‘What do you want to do today?’ I asked.
Chapter Seventeen
‘I have to go to him,’ I said, pacing.
Chapter Eighteen
‘What are you talking about?’ I stayed at the door,…
Chapter Nineteen
I was woken by the clatter of keys on the…
Chapter Twenty
‘So you’re Lucy’s life.’ Nosy was sitting on the edge…
Chapter Twenty-One
I sat at the dining table in my parents’ home…
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Don, I’m so sorry,’ I said straight away, ignoring my…
Chapter Twenty-Three
I didn’t sleep very much that night. Life wasn’t snoring…
Chapter Twenty-Four
From the corner of my eye I saw Jenna slip…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Blake and I were face to face in the people…
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘I’m sorry, I need to do what?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I awoke to a fully dressed Life watching me from…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Mum, are you awake?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Blake.’ My voice was a barely a whisper but they…
Chapter Thirty
I lay in bed for a week – at least…
Epilogue
Other Books by The Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE
Dear Lucy Silchester,
You have an appointment for Monday 30 May.
I didn’t read the rest. I didn’t need to, I knew who it was from. I could tell as
soon as I arrived home from work to my studio apartment and saw it lying on the
floor, halfway from the front door to the kitchen, on the burned part of the carpet
where the Christmas tree had fallen – and landed – two years ago and the lights
had singed the carpet hairs. The carpet was a cheap old thing chosen by my
penny-pinching landlord, a grey worn industrial yarn that looked as though more
feet had trodden over it than the apparently ‘lucky’ testicles of the bull mosaic in
Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II in Milan. You’d find a similar kind of fabric in
my office building – a more appropriate location as it was never intended to be
walked on barefoot, made only for the steady stream of on-foot shiny leather-
shoe traffic moving from cubicle to photocopier, photocopier to coffee machine,
coffee machine to emergency exit stairwell for a sneaky smoke, ironically the
only location which failed to alert the fire alarm. I had been a part of the effort to
find the smoking spot and each time the enemy had located us, we began efforts
to find a new safe house. The current place was easy to find – hundreds of butts
in piles on the ground to mark the spot, their lives sucked out of them by their
users in panicked distressed frenzy, their souls floating around the insides of
lungs while their outsides were dropped, stamped on and deserted. It was a place
more worshipped than any other in the building, more than the coffee machine,
more than the exit doors at six p.m., most certainly more than the chair before
the desk of Edna Larson – the boss lady – who ate good intentions like a broken